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About me
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I was born in Randolph, Vermont, in 1950. My parents, Irving and Barbara Fiske, Greenwich Village intellectuals, had bought an old hill farm of about 140 acres in Rochester, Vermont on April 10, 1946, and called it Quarry Hill. They hoped to make it a retreat for artistic and free-thinking persons, and a place where children and animals, as well as others, would be free from fear of abuse, hunting, spanking, etc. My father was a writer and playwright; my mother, a visionary artist and a Harvey Comics cartoonist during the WWII years. They had 2 children, myself and William, my brother (1954-2008). In addition, my uncle, Milton Fiske, a classical composer, and his sons, Robin and David (1954-1976), lived with or near us and shared our philosophy of allowing children freedom, self-determination, and not to be forced to go to school.
In the 1960s Quarry Hill became a kind of unadvertised Mecca of the youth movement; my father, Irving, gave talks on "Tantra, the Yoga of Sex" and related thought and idea on philosophy and religion each week at Gallery Gwen, the family's storefront at 74 E. 4th ST. in New York City, the burgeoning East Village. He usually spoke on Wednesday or Thursday and on Friday would return to Vermont, bringing with him anyone interested in visiting for the weekend (or longer). He advertised this experience with a flyer that said "Free Vermont Mountain Vacations" and requested a donation of $10 a week (or more if possible). Many, many people were drawn to visit Quarry Hill, and before long were building houses and having children on the Fiske family land (which led to later legal complications, but was a lot of fun while things went smoothly).
Quarry Hill was never an agrarian commune, or indeed a commune of any kind,as possessions were not held in common, and there were few "rules." "No Hitting The Kids, No Hunting, and No Dishes in the Sink" were the most basic concepts of the place. The idea was "Everything for the sake of the Newcomer" and that "children are ambassadors from another dimension, who deserve every diplomatic courtesy," as Irving would say. He had been a writer for the WPA and had been a "rewrite man" on the again-in-print "WPA Guide to New York City." He had also "translated" Hamlet (by William Shakespeare) into Modern American Colloquial English, and this had won out over the traditional version when excerpts were published by John Ciardi in the Saturday Evening Review and readers were asked to state which version they preferred.
IN the meantime, I was growing up, helping to keep Quarry Hill running, and enjoying the flowering of the 1960s in New York and elsewhere. I became close friends with a group of young intellectuals at Harpur College in Binghamton, NY (now Binghamton University). Through them and in other ways, I met the Underground Cartoonists, particularly Art Spiegelman, R. Crumb, Trina Robbins, Kim Deitch, etc. For several years I was Art Spiegelman's girlfriend, and for many more his close friend. In 1979 Art, his wife Françoise Mouly, and a group of QH people created Top-Drawer Rubber Stamp Company, which specialized in images by the underground cartoonists, and helped to provide some financial support for the always-on-a-shoestring Quarry Hillians.
In the late 70s and early 80s, Elizabeth Marshall, one of the young women who lived at QH, and was a particularly close associate of my father (who had been divorced from my artist mother, Barbara Hall Fiske, in 1976-- though she continued to live at Quarry Hill except for a period when she ran her own gallery in Randolph, Vermont at 14 Pleasant Street), and who was an heiress of the Hallmark fortune, began to come into some of her financial inheritance. Feeling that she was helping to create a new and remarkable kind of life, Ms. Marshall agreed to contribute a portion of her income to persons and institutions at Quarry Hill (as did some others, depending on their financial ability and also their personal inclination). There was a need for this sensible use of what was agreed to be a financial excess above the need of the person who had accidentally inherited it; for the group of people living here were often so broke that we typically lived on bulghur wheat and milkweed casseroles. Ms. Marshall's, and that of others, financial contributions, assisted--for a number of years-- the residents and philosophical point of view of Quarry Hill to survive and to flower. ELizabeth Marshall (Begley, after the last of her three marriages, to a computer programmer named Ralph Begley) was particularly supportive to The North Hollow School, QH's "independent Reporting School," which (according to historian Michael Sherman) became a model for other such schools around the state. For years, the children taught in the North Hollow School who decided to later go to the local school graduated as Valedictorian and gained a Green and Gold Scholarship to the University of Vermont. I am sure that everyone who benefitted from the generosity of Mrs. Begley and her former husband, Allen Sherman, among others, appreciates the assistance they were given at the time-- until Mrs. Begley decided to move to California and end her association with Quarry Hill in 1999, following Irving Fiske's death.
While I have an honorary high school diploma from Quarry Hill's NHS, I myself never went to any other school at all, but was "unschooled" with the help of my parents (my father was a Cornell graduate and my mother had studied art in Los Angeles). When I reached the age of about 39, I decided to attend Vermont College's Adult Degree Program in Montpelier, VT., on the suggestion of family friend Dick Hathaway. I graduated in 2007 with a degree in writing and a minor in psychology. But I have always felt that my true Alma Mater is Harpur College, or Binghamton University, in Binghamton, New York, where I was essentially the school mascot until kicked out in the winter of 1966-67 for being present in the boy's dorms without any formal arrangement with the school. I received a most classical education through my family and my own reading, in any case.
Quarry Hill's children grew up to feel like one wide family and even today are always profoundly supportive and caring of one another. The experiment my parents began-- to see what would happen if children were allowed to do "exactly as they pleased"-- seems to have fruited in a lush form in the next generation. Some of these children are filmmakers, artists, costume makers, health workers, psychologists/social workers, and (budding) attorneys, among other things.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the standard relationship at Quarry Hill often consisted of a "primary" relationship, a "secondary" one, and a "tertiary" one; the nights were listed in a little, free Hallmark calendar. This was also used to keep "the Kids List," based on Aldous Huxley's "Mutual Adoption Club" in his novel "Island," but also the invention of a bright young woman named Deb Venn. The children were given additional support and entertainment on four-hour shifts by residents of Quarry Hill-- in the case of my daughter, Joya, a very necessary arrangement, as she virtually never slept at night, and I was continuously sleep-deprived. Her father had left when she was six weeks old (my relationship with him was a friendly one but not the love affair I had had with Art Spiegelman), and I struggled to care for her with the help of my family until the Kids List (and some friends of mine) stepped in to help. Soon all the kids were being raised with assistance from the Kids List. Sometimes this arrangement to help with child care intertwined with sexual relations or a love affair or marriage; at other times, it was entirely platonic.
When the children grew too old for the need of this kind of one-on-one care, and when HIV/AIDS made its appearance, most relations at Quarry Hill abruptly shifted into a more conventional one-or-two-parent family. But all the children were deeply loved, appreciated, admired, and to the very best of our abilities, cared for and educated. I believe that they are a very remarkable group of young people and I believe that the flowering of their interrelationship will continue with love and support into generations to come. I have been a writer and artist and have tried to do my best to keep QH alive all my life. My father died on April 25, 1990, in Ocala, Fla. of a stroke, in the arms of one of his three girlfriends. My mother had married again, to a Quaker professor, Dr. Donald W. Calhoun, of whom we (including Irving, despite his twinges of jealousy) were all very fond, and they remained happily married till his death on May 5, 2009. She is still living, at the age of 92 (she was born Sep. 9, 1919), and while suffering from physical problems of one sort or another, continues her lifelong journey to support and love the creative being and to say that "art is prayer." She, like myself, is a member of the Society of Friends (Quakers). Until recently I worked as a paraeducator in the local schools, and since 1984 have been married to Brion McFarlin, a great and generous man who has been a father-figure and friend to the children of Quarry Hill. He works as a quality control manager at Data Innovations in Williston, VT. We have one son together, Andrew; he has another son, Airon, and I have a daughter, Joya, by another father, Ellias Lonsdale, a guru and astrologer in Hawai'i. I still substitute teach from time to time.
Quarry Hill today is a family-owned corporation, Lyman Hall, Inc. and is a warm, friendly, communal-feeling, but privately owned place. We welcome visitors but request prior communication before visiting.